Save a YouTube video
Mac Tip #386, 27 May 2009
You don’t have to be connected to the Internet to view a YouTube video — if you download it first. Here’s how to download a YouTube video.
How this Tip came about
I became quite caught up with the last few shows on American Idol 2009. I heard Adam Lambert sing Ring of Fire and was hooked. I found him a very versatile and exceptional performer.
In fact, I enjoyed his performances so much I followed the link to buy his songs on iTunes. But there’s a huge problem with that: they aren’t available in the New Zealand iTunes Store.
So, I did the next best thing: I downloaded his performances from the American Idol website so I can listen again when I want to. And if they ever do allow me to pay for them, I will.
I used the same process to download those songs as to download a YouTube video — it’s not as obvious as it seems.
How to save a YouTube video
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- In a web browser, load the YouTube video you want to download.
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- The video listed in the Activity window in Safari.
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- The video listed in the Downloads window in Safari.
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- The downloaded video plays in VLC media player.
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- Queen Rania YouTube Channel.
Here’s how to save a YouTube video if you’re using Safari. If you use other web browsers, the process is the same, but you may have to look around in the menus to find the right items.
- View the YouTube video you wish to download and save.
- Open Safari’s Activity window (from the Window menu).
- In the Activity window click the disclosure triangle beside the correct Safari Tab or Window. A list appears showing all the activity for that Tab. In my screenshot you can see a long list of items that are part of the Queen Rania YouTube page I have open. Beside each item is a size in Kb or Mb.
- Identify the biggest item — it’s likely to be several megabytes. In my screenshot it’s a 3.4Mb item at the top of the list.
- Watch that item as the size may be constantly increasing. If it is that means the video is still loading.
- Hold down the Option key (⌥) and double click on that line. The movie file downloads to your Downloads folder. It may be named something like
video.flv.
Play the video in VLC
You should now be able to play that video file using the free VLC Media Player.
Update February 2012: originally my Tip said to wait till the file size in the Activity window stopped increasing. Actually you can do the Option double-click any time to start the download.
By the way, the video I loaded for my screenshots was by Queen Rania of Jordan. She is an extremely intelligent and beautiful world leader who is using YouTube, Twitter and other channels to bring about change in the world.
Her themes are around education, eradicating poverty, and encouraging understanding.
This particular video is a humorous response to an award she won.
I recommend Queen Rania’s YouTube Channel
Visit Queen Rania’s official YouTube Channel to experiment with the download technique I’ve explained here.
See also Eltima’s YouTube downloader for Mac.
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* 31 comments… read them below and tell us what you think.
I found this page by googling help to get some Adam Lambert videos too! I didn’t even use Adam Lambert as the keywords, ha… Anyways, so you do the same thing as the saving a YouTube video when you want to download his video performance off the American Idol site?
Awesomesauce: yup. :-)
By the way, once you download a video[not through the iTunes store], how can you get into your iTunes?
Awesomesauce: iTunes probably won’t play the .flv file. You may need to convert the file to another movie format. I’m sure Google will give you lots of possibilities if you search on something like ‘convert .flv to .mp4′.
Superb… simplest and easiest way to download files…
Wish that iTunes gives this support or You Tubes give this option at their site in near future…
THanx..!! that was most useful…
Great idea but this is a whole lot simpler than it seems. Just double click while holding down on the apple (command) and it is instantly in the download folder. Don’t need to download again. You’re welcome.
Thanks for the comment Flightmaster, but I’m confused.
If I Command double-click the movie itself it goes fullscreen. If I Command double-click the listing in the Activity window then it does the same thing as Option double-clicking – as I describe in my Tip.
Can you explain exactly what you’re suggesting people should click on?
Why does everytime i click on the line on the activity page
i just goes to another window?
it doesn’t download
It depends which line you click. You need to identify the line for the video, then hold down the Option key while you double click.
The same thing has happened to me more recently. It’s obviously a way of them trying to prevent you from saving the video. And I know I have identified the right line. However, I just discovered that you can outsmart this by doing the following:
In the activity window highlight the line that corresponds with the video and push option-c to copy.
Then open the downloads window and push option-v to paste and the download should start right away.
Thanks for this. That’s handy to know.
Miraz, the best app I’ve found on Mac and PC for this is Tooble….
http://tooble.tv/
Even the free version converts a YouTube link to a format that will play in iTunes (it’ll even move the file there for you or just leave it on your computer) and therefore, it’ll play on your iPhone etc.
Phil
Thanks Phil, I appreciate the handy tip. I’ll try it next time I need to grab a YouTube video.
I waited until the file on activity monitor was saved , but when I double clicked the file (in activity monitor), it just simply opened a new window & started playing ,No downloads, any idea? Have downloaded some videos, but this one didn’t work.
Alfred, instead of double clicking the file in Activity Monitor find the file in the Finder and play it from there.
Remember to Option double click the file in the Activity Monitor in order to download it in the first place.
A tip of the morion to C. Jones. Copying the link and pasting in the Downloads screen gets instant results. After download is finished, click the little magnifying glass to find in Finder, drag file to desktop, and change name (to name of video) and add the .flv extension. You can play it in VLC, or convert with FLV Crunch (unobtrusive, fast and free) to MP4 and play in iTunes.
Thanks Marco. It’s useful to know about FLV Crunch too.
thank you very much!!! I needed this for my project and you gave me the way :D thank you so much!!!!
If you download movies via Safari it’s rather difficult to separate out various Flash flies from the ads and the .swfs and to pick the right one. So it’s better to use YouTube downloader. For example Elmedia Player PRO (http://mac.eltima.com/youtube-downloader-mac.html)
You can also visit this site,
http://www.tubekeeper.com/
copy and paste youtube video page URL and paste to the site,
it will generate download link for you (FLV, MP4-HD, 3GP).
Facebook, Metacafe video download supported too.
Thank you so much for this!! Worked perfectly and kept me from having to download another application that might not have worked! (: By the way, Handbrake (google it) is a fantastic program for converting .flv and almost any other file types to mp4 and AVI files, so try that if you need another file type for the videos you’re downloading.
tried several time
saves in downloads as an html & uses safari to open & play
downloaded vlc media player & tries to open the html, did not work
what am i doing incorrectly
converting from pc to mac(10.5.8) the last year
please help
tc
Hi tc,
I can only think that maybe in Step 4 above you’re not Option clicking on the correct file. Make sure you’re getting the biggest item as that will be the movie.
i just checked again with a movie I’ve never seen before and it worked just fine.
Great tip, but I’m having one problem with it. It seems that you can only download 7 minutes of video. I am trying to download a ten minute tv show episode, but it doesn’t seem to be working. Any advise?
This always worked well for me, but now has stopped. I can find the downloading file of several Mb, and double clicking makes it download, but when the file has downloaded, and claims to be eg 10Mb, when I open it it says it is a ‘plain text’ file and is full of code, couldn’t possibly be 10Mb as it claims. What has changed? What can I do about it? Any suggestions would be gratefully received!
Hi Rosie,
it sounds as though the wrong app is opening it. Do you show file extensions on your Mac? If the file extension is .flv or .m4v or similar then instead of double clicking to open it try this. Right click (Control click) on the file and choose Open With from the menu that appears. Open with Quicktime or VLC or similar.
Does that help?
I need to keep revisiting video in youtube for music lessons. I find the programmes like Keepvid and wondershare don’t work for me but there again I am not super cleaver with computers is there a easy wasy to download video to a mac?
Well, John, scroll up and read the instructions on this page that tell you how to save a YouTube video to your Mac. :-)
Very useful. Thanks a lot
@BruceHoult pointed out: If you’ve installed Perian (every Mac should have Perian and Flip4Mac) then any QuickTime-aware app can play it, not just VLC.
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